Hall looks forward to new year of exhibits

She teaches drawing, and is also the director of Wesleyan’s Bernice Coulter Templeton Art Studio. Hall was chair of the Art Department at Wesleyan before it was dissolved.

Hall has kept a framed photo of an article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram from 1940 about how students at the time created the first exhibition space for artwork at Texas Wesleyan. It was located where Martin Hall is now. There has not been a designated exhibition gallery since then until this year.

“We would have exhibitions on campus,” Hall said. “They would be in the Academic Success Center and people from all over the country would bring art.”

Hall has dedicated a lot of her time and effort to Wesleyan having a new art gallery, and this year it has all paid off with the opening of the Templeton studio in the fall of 2017. She said that year the gallery hosted four amazing exhibitions. There was also an exhibition on March 19, 2018 called the Art Bash where students, faculty, staff, and alumni could get their own artwork displayed.

Juan Cruz, an artist that has been featured in Wesleyan’s gallery, said his artwork was made through personal responses to things.

“My artwork is made through personal, emotional responses to religious beliefs, social issues and cultural traditions,” Cruz said.

Many artist have found escape and purpose putting artwork in the gallery, said Thomas Motely, another one of the artists featured in the gallery.

“Each of these artists seeks a kind of recovery, a restoration of dignity and purpose within the human body and spirit,” Motely said.

After the success Hall has had this year, she has more hopes and plans for the art gallery, and is excited for the gallery’s upcoming year. Hall said she plans to have “six unbelievably great art exhibitions, three in the fall and three in the spring.”

“The first exhibition next year will open up when classes start on an undisclosed date,” Hall said. “A professor from Tarleton State University, Molly Dirks, will be talking a little bit about nature, and a little bit about recycling, and how man messes up nature. The way she described it is that it will be like a fantasy forest, so it will be an installation when you walk in and it will all be three-dimensional.”

“The second exhibition is going to be by an artist by the name of Sarah Cardona, a professor at Dallas Community College,” Hall said. “Her thesis is that she kind of combines the old art form of collage and film making. Those two things will come together in a large format collage essentially. We are very excited to see what that will look like.”

The third exhibit will close out the fall. It is a jury competition of the Texas Pottery & Sculpture Guild, so that will be a group exhibition containing all ceramics,” Hall said. They will have an outside juror come in and judge entries, and then those entries will be in the show.”

Architect Lee Hill’s work will be the first artwork displayed in the spring of 2019.

“To start the spring semester, we have an abstract artist, who is also an architect in Fort Worth,” Hall said. “He deals a lot with nature and abstraction, so it will be very mechanical mixed with throwing in vine shapes. They’re all two-dimensional paintings.”

The second spring 2019 exhibition will feature three-dimensional artwork.

“The second exhibition in the spring semester will be Rebeca Boatman,” Hall said. “She will be doing three-dimensional sculptures mostly made out of ceramics, but it is mixed media. It will be very feminist- orientated in that the figures that she makes are all female figures inspired by African imagery. It is very unique, and I’m very excited about that.”

The final display for spring 2019 is the one Hall said she is most excited for.

“The last exhibition of the spring semester will be by Martin Breif,” Hall said. “This is probably the one I’m most excited about because he is the one that does an installation that he has described as 2,000 plus or minus 5 by 7 cards applied to the wall in a grid form. The entire gallery will be covered.

“I just want students to know the art gallery is here, and for students to come over and just look at the art.”

The Bernice Coulter Templeton Art Studio is located at 1415 E. Vaughn Street and is open 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday. For more information call 817-531-4984 or go to txwes.edu.